In one of the craziest elections in American history, Barack Obama overcame a lack of experience, a funny name, two candidates who are political institutions and the racial divide to become the 44th President of the United States

Mikheil Saakashvili

Irakli Gedenidze / Reuters

He poked the Russian bear, and his tiny nation got mauled. But Saakashvili, President of Georgia, stood out as a beacon of hope for former Soviet states now menaced by the imperial ambitions of 2007's Person of the Year, Vladimir Putin. Outgunned on the battlefield, Saakashvili, a U.S.-trained lawyer (above, on a recent visit to New York City), used superior media savvy to cast himself as a modern-day democratic David, fending off the monster from Moscow.